Janus has no parallel in the Greek pantheon, making him an exclusively Roman god. A duel headed, with one head looking forward and the other behind, he marked actual and metaphorical thresholds in time and space. Janus guarded crossing places and thresholds, beginnings and endings and acted as an intermediary between the gods and mortals.
Attributes of Janus
Janus is portrayed as a bearded duel-headed god who bore a staff in his right hand and keys in his left. Ovid’s Fasti describes him as formed from chaos at the beginning of time, indicating how ancient the Romans believed him to be. He is also described in mythic-historic terms as the first king of Latium in the mythical golden age. In either guise, he is responsible for initiating many innovations.
The God of Beginnings and Endings
The Romans credited Janus with founding metal coinage and religion. He initiated the building of the first temples and even the festival of Saturnalia.
Janus was widely regarded as the god of beginnings. He reputedly played a role at the conception of a baby and was, along with Juno, the god of the kalends or first day of the month. He was also regarded as the god of the dawn of each new day.
Janus was also honoured at the beginning and the end of military campaigns. He was believed to hold war at bay and it was at his discretion whether peace or conflict ruled the earth. It was customary in times of complete peace to close his original temple in the Roman forum to contain and preserve the situation by barring passage across his threshold.
God of Thresholds
Janus was the god of all thresholds, gates and doors on the physical plain. His name derives from this function, ianua or opening. His original sanctuary was on the Janiculum hill, which was on the threshold of Rome itself.
God of the New Year
Janus was also the guardian deity of non-physical boundaries, particularly the threshold between one year and the next.
His month was January, which takes its name from him. Originally, January marked the date when the year’s consuls took office. Janus, therefore, oversaw the beginning of the political rather than the calendar new year.
This changed with the reorganisation of the calendar under Caesar. January replaced March as the official first month of the year, making Janus the god of the New Year.
To mark the occasion of the New Year, the Romans gave gifts of dates, figs and honey because their sweetness was believed to flavour the year to come. Janus was propitiated on the first and ninth day of the month to ensure a happy and prosperous new year because of his role as an intermediary deity.
Intermediary between Gods and Mortals
Janus’s final function was to act as the boundary between the gods and mortals. In the Carmen Saliare, he was named “god of gods”. This referred to his role as one of the oldest deities, even if he was not Rome’s primary deity.
Janus was important not only because of his age but because he was the doorway to the other gods. If a worshipper won his favour, all the other gods were open to them but displease Janus, and the divine gateway was firmly shut. For this reason, Janus was named first in prayers and received the first offerings of wine and incense in rituals.
Resources
Ovid (translated and edited by A J Boyle and R D Woodard) Fasti. Penguin Classics
Price, Simon and Kearns, Emily (Eds) 2003. The Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth and Religion. Oxford University Press: Oxford
Cicero, (trans. Horace CP McGregor) The Nature of the Gods. Penguin Books
Dumezil, Georges (trans Philip Krapp) 1996. Archaic Roman Religion Vol I. The John Hopkins University Press. Baltimore and London.
